-LRB- CNN -RRB- Saturday 's downhill at Kitzbühel is the jewel in the World Cup calendar , the winner meriting legendary status in the alpine annals .

Like any budding skier , Daniel Albrecht had always dreamed of triumphing at the foot of Austria 's Hahnenkamm mountain but instead , six years ago , he lay face down on the snow , out cold within meters of the finish line .

Online footage of the crash -- memorable to everyone except Albrecht who can not remember anything from the day before the incident to three weeks hence -- is not for the faint-hearted .

At the time , he had been the rising star of Swiss skiing with four World Cup wins to his name and a solitary world title -- the 2007 Super Combined . On a training run with the finish line in sight , he approached the final jump .

A minor error on his part -- exacerbated by the fact he was traveling at 140 kph -LRB- 87 mph -RRB- -- saw his skis flap wildly out of control as he battled to regain his balance for 40 meters in the air before landing heavily on his back .

Albrecht suffered a brain injury and a bruised lung , was airlifted to hospital and placed in a coma for three weeks to give both his brain and lung the best chance of recovery .

`` It was a hard time , '' he recalls . `` You have to learn your name , your age , all this stuff . ''

His first memory was of a hospital ceiling and it was three weeks after regaining consciousness that he once again remembered his name and the fact he had been a top skier .

`` The last memory I have is from the day before . The feeling was great because the slope was in good shape and I was fast in first training and I was skiing easily . I knew that I was going to be fast in this race . Then , yeah , it was too fast ! ''

Albrecht is able to laugh as he retells the incident , in part helped by the fact he has no recall of the savage beating he took on the final meters of the Kitzbühel course even after watching it back on a few occasions .

To him , it is as though he is watching someone else 's dramatic and sudden alpine downfall , and without emotion .

`` If I watch myself in Kitzbühel then I feel like it was n't me because I do n't have any memory of him . I know that he was me , I see that it was me but , for me , it was not a person . I was out of my body . ''

In the early weeks of his recovery from his brain trauma he did not have the strength to even feed himself . However , slowly but surely he got up to speed although he admits `` I have something -LSB- his brain -RSB- that does n't work so good like before . So I 'm always in recovery . ''

Today , he gets tired quicker and his temper frays more readily than prior to the accident .

But remarkably , it did not end his career , rather it was a dislocated left kneecap after crashing in another training run at Lake Louise , Canada in November 2012 that finally called time on his professional career on the slopes .

Amazingly , it was just a week after being released from the neurological unit that cared for him that he was back skiing despite the inherent dangers of the sport .

`` The first time I was on skis , I thought ` okay , shit , this is a nice feeling , I wan na go back in the World Cup ' , '' he recalls . `` I got down okay -LSB- the first time -RSB- but it was not so easy because then when I see I have to make a turn and then the brain had to tell the knee what to do . Everything was in slow motion . ''

Slow as the process may have seemed initially , within two years , he was back on the World Cup circuit although not quite the same force he previously was . There were to be no further World Cup wins , not that he minded enormously .

He still recalls the feeling of being in the start gate for that first race back : `` It was a great feeling . I was a bit nervous . Then I told me , okay , it 's the first race , just ski easily . Then it was so good , the feeling was so great and I was also fast . ''

On his return to the sport , the doctors had warned him he might suffer headaches at altitude . He never did . He was also warned about the perilous nature of another knock to the head .

`` Skiing is dangerous and it 's always going to be in a little way dangerous . But if you are a skier , if you are a pro , if you 're the downhill , it 's not so dangerous because you know what you can do , you know how it works and , for us , Kitzbühel , when you ski it 's easy . ''

Persuading his family , his wife in particular , of that fact was the harder part but , in the end , they knew they could not stand in the way of his desire and the thing that made him tick as a human being .

The return was relatively short-lived , his knee putting pay to his ambitions to once more get to the very top of the sport . Having his career cut short was hard .

`` My body told me that ` no , it 's over now . You came back , you were in the World Cup again , you did it , you have you 're whole life in front of you ' . ''

Now , he runs his own clothes line , Albright , and also mentors young skiers giving the 30-year-old a new career in the sport .

Part of him , the racer within , would like to be in that start gate to tackle the slope on which he was lucky to survive . But he 's just happy to have had a second chance at life .

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It is six years since Daniel Albrecht suffered brain trauma on the Kitzbühel downhill

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Remarkably , he returned from the injury to the World Cup circuit two years after the event

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On the eve of the Kitzbühel downhill , he relives an accident he remembers nothing about

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Today , he has his own clothing line and mentor 's up-and-coming skiers